Getting the new knee mill off the pallet

[Jubil]

My vote goes to pry bar and several pieces of scrap lumber along with some short, (long enough to span the bottom of the machine), lengths of 1”- 2” pipe for rolling. And/or a pallet jack. Rental yards and some big box stores rent pallet jacks for about $35 per day.
A few years back I bought 7 machines from a tool and die shop. 1 Bridgeport mill 1900#, 1 Cincinnati hv mill 2500+#, sinker edm est. 3000+#, 1 small K&T horizontal mill 3000+#, 3 surface grinders 500-3500#. All sitting flat on the floor. Had to move them out of a room before I could get a forklift to load them.
A friend who could barely walk helped me move them all with pry bar etc. as above. Not trying to brag just saying it can be done this way, very inexpensively.

Chuck

 

[matthewsx]

Biggest factor will be the slope of your driveway. If it’s almost flat into the garage you have more options than if it’s fairly steep. Yes there are many ways to diy but if in doubt please leave it to the pros. You want all your fingers and toes to use the machine and fixing these tools after they’ve been dropped is expensive.

John

 

[matthewsx]

Also, don’t know if you’ve put out a call for help here but when I did a couple of experienced members came to my aid. It made all the difference in having the confidence and tools to get the job done. There’s no way to brute strength these things, you need the tools and knowledge BEFORE you start.

John

 

[akjeff]

I rented a forklift and hired a guy who's done it numerous times, to get my Lagun mill off the trailer, into the garage, and off the pallet( and mounted leveling feet under the base while it was off the floor ). Once on the leveling feet, it's easy to move around with just a pallet jack. The forklift rental was $125 well spent.

 

[matthewsx]

Forklift is the best but you have to be able to get it into the garage. When I owned my business I could remove the cage from my forklift to get it into my small shop. If your garage door is low you’ll need to take that into consideration. Also the mast on the forklift may be higher than the mill itself depending on where you lift from.

I used to own a Gorton 1-22 MasterMill but let it go because I couldn’t figure a safe way to get it into my garage at the time. Knowing what I know now I would have made it work but that ship has sailed. Literally as I traded it for new rigging on my sailboat

John

 

[kb58]

At around 1500 lbs, a PM935 on pipes proves educational about what happens when you remove all friction on something heavy on a garage floor built with the standard slope. It was pretty amazing how it tried to head for the driveway - and how hard it was to stop! Have something like a wedge to stop it. Lesson learned!

 

[petertha]

This is just to provide you some ideas. When my mill was delivered they used a pallet jack to get from truck into garage/shop over semi-smooth interlock brick driveway. I didn't have to rent one because they spotted machine in place with their own equipment, but seems like pallet jacks are easy to rent in most cities. Note the layer gription carpet or whatever in between the machine & forks. They also utilized used their 'jacking up' plates to elevate the mill off the blades. They are low profile & can be slid in & out of machines for applications like this.

One thing you might want to consider if you haven't already, is a base for the mill. My buddy welded mine from steel rectangle tube & I bought rubber machining mounts. That takes care of machine leveling, wider footprint, vibration reduction, work height optimization & potentially easier re-moving options all in one package. Lots of posts on this subject. I was able to have them mount my base at the shop which made life easy but it could have been done on location too. If I did it over again I would have paid more attention to pallet jack widths, widened my mount pucks a whopping 1/8" so the forks could slide in & out with the mounts pre-attached.

 

[Dabbler]

When I bought my big mill, I got it delivered to my garage with tailgate delivery. The slope from the lane to the garage, while only 7 feet, is about 17% grade, or 1 foot rise for every 6 or so feet. Two of us, a 66 year old and a 77 year old hauled it up the slope using my pallet jack, on plywood over gravel, so it can be done.

However they couldn't forklift the rotting pallet, so they put the bad pallet on top of a good pallet! yes, it was about 9" off the floor!. I cut the bad pallet strategically, and inserted 2 - 6" wide by 1/2 " thick bars across the base, and used blocking and a pry bar to carefully take the weight off the pallets. After that more cutting of the bad pallet, and sliding out the good one. Putting down the 3800 lb mill was a bit but-puckering, but at 1/2" at a time, it came down very safely. I lives on 2 4X4 PT wood skids until I can move it into final position...

here's a good basic video on cribbing if you haven't been introduced to the formal rules:

What the video doesn't show that's really valuable is that you can use 3/4 or 1/2 inch plywood, same length and width to make smaller steps.

 

[hman]

Please do NOT lift your mill by the ram: the dovetails and the X clamp are not sized to take the entire mill weight - even if some people get away with it.

Hmmmm ... I kinda disagree with that point. PM says to lift the mill by the ram in their manual, and I even called them to verify. What I WAS concerned with was lifting the mill by the (20mm) eye bolt atop the ram. I was paranoid about lifting by a single (Chinese) piece of hardware. PM's instructions did also mention using a sling strap, so that's the way I went. I used a brand new strap rated for 2000 lbs, and by double-looping it (visible in my photos), I got some extra margarine of safety.

As for the dovetails - I just measured the cast iron around them. The dovetails themselves are just a bit over 1" tall vertically, and about 14" long. I myself would not be concerned about a failure in that massive an amount of iron.

Another possible point of failure is the four 12mm bolts that hold the ram base (turret) to the machine base. The ones on the PM mill are probably a lot smaller than those on a Bridgeport. But even "standard" 12mm bolts are rated for a bit over 7500 lbs each. So I don't think that's an issue. I did replace the original Allen head bolts with some good flange head hex bolts while "fluff and buffing" the mill.
<aside>
@Dabbler - I asssume this area is what you meant when you mentioned the "X clamp." I seem to recall Bridgeports having something like that, to allow full head rotation. The PM isn't that sophisticated. It just has 4 curved slots on the base of the ram, which allow rotation of about ±10º on the four screws.

A final point for @Pcmaker - The mill ships with the head inverted and supported by the knee. Be sure to leave the head that way, and lower the knee, if you plan to do any manual moving. That will keep the center of gravity as low as possible.

 

[Pcmaker]

Someone told me that they might just drop it off the side of the road since liftgate service is just that. I've had 2 machines delivered from PM before and both times, they used a pallet jack and asked me where I wanted to put it in my garage.

Have you guys ever had this issue? I hope they at the very least put it on my driveway. Otherwise, if it's on the side of the road, I'd have no way to bring it to my garage.

Also, my plan as of now, if they can't put it inside my garage because of the height of the crate, but set it on my driveway instead, is to take off the top and sides of the crate to allow overhead clearance, then anchor a 1/2-13 eyebolt on my garage floor, then use a come-along to pull the crate from the driveway into my garage using rescue straps rated for 6k lbs.